


After the War

by redcandle17



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 06:44:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2338964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcandle17/pseuds/redcandle17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pansy Parkinson goes missing from the Wizarding world after the war, leaving her friends to fear the worst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After the War

**Author's Note:**

  * For [andrea_deer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andrea_deer/gifts).



After the war, Pansy Parkinson...

_Goes to America. She opens a bakery and becomes famous for her pumpkin pasties._

“That’s not true,” Seamus Finnigan said. “Americans don’t eat pumpkin pasties. Had some in me muggle gran’s pub. Turned up their noses at her pasties, they did.”

_Gives up her wand and marries a muggle, an investment banker. She lives a quiet life with her husband and two children in Coventry._

“Impossible,” said Hannah Abbott. “Pansy would never marry a muggle, not even if he were richer than Midas and more handsome than Adonis.” 

_Can be seen in Knockturn Alley late most nights. She charges five galleons for an hour of her company and does things most witches have never even heard of._

“Not bloody likely,” Padma Patil snorted. “Did you make that up yourself, Michael?”

The truth was that no one knew what had become of Pansy. Not even her old mates from Slytherin House knew. None of them had seen her since the Battle of Hogwarts. 

“It’s like she disappeared,” Millicent said to Blaise. It was the thirty-first of December and in a few minutes it would be the start of a new millennium. Pansy had been missing for a year and a half. 

“You don’t think they did something to her, do you? That lot - Potter, Weasley, Granger - you don’t think they killed her or something, do you?” 

They were both drunk and they’d been having a merry time before the conversation turned to Pansy. The topic, however, was sobering in more ways than one. 

“I don’t think so,” Millicent replied. “Potter sees himself as a hero and Granger’s too concerned with doing right to do anything like that.”

“Weasley-”

“He hasn’t got the stones to try anything on his own.” 

“It might have been somebody else. Almost the whole school was ready to hex her when she suggested giving Potter over to the Dark Lord.” 

“Voldemort,” Millicent corrected. “You have to say ‘Voldemort’, Blaise. The MLE will haul you in for questioning if the wrong person hears you call him the Dark Lord.” 

Blaise sighed. “I’d have stayed abroad longer if I’d known this nonsense was still going on.” 

After the war he'd gone to stay with some cousins. Fleeing, some called it, but anyone with a healthy sense of self-preservation could have seen the need for it. Millicent didn't fault him. She was just glad he was back. They'd never really been friends at Hogwarts, but with Pansy vanished, Vincent dead, Gregory in prison, and Draco avoiding all his old friends as a term of his pardon, their social circle was much diminished. 

“You can’t really blame them, though, can you?” she said. “The first time around, when Voldemort disappeared after killing Potter’s parents, most of his supporters claimed they’d been controlled into doing his bidding and everyone was so eager for things to go back to normal, they didn’t push or pry and all those Death Eaters like the Carrows were free to join Voldemort when he resurfaced.” 

Blaise couldn’t argue with that, though he wasn't happy with being looked at with suspicion by every low-level Ministry clerk and Diagon Alley shopgirl he encountered. He slouched low in his seat and put his feet up on Nott’s coffee table. Then he raised his glass of Ogden's Old Firewhiskey and called, loudly, “To Pansy.”

The others at the party stopped their own conversations to toast their missing friend. “To Pansy,” they shouted, and they all drank. None of them expected to ever see her again.

~

She’s not going to stay here and die because the rest of them are too stupid to turn precious Potter over to the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord is not to be defied. Pansy’s seen the changes in Draco and even in her own father. She knows that serving him is dangerous and that opposing him is the only thing more dangerous. All she wants is to be far away from it all.

So she runs. 

She’s headed for the Forbidden Forest - it’s dangerous, yes, but right now there’s even more danger at the main gate. She just needs to get beyond the boundaries of Hogwarts and then she’ll be able to Apparate away. 

There’s a body sprawled athwart her path. It’s facedown, thankfully. She tries not to look, not to see, but something catches her attention. There’s a wand lying near, as if it fell from its owner’s grasp when he was hit. Without thinking about it, she picks up the wand and tucks it inside her robes. 

When she reaches the forest, she Apparates. She has no clear destination in mind. She just wants to be somewhere far away. She’s more than a little panicked, if truth be told. 

She ends up some place very strange. She’s in a field of grass surrounded by massive glass towers as far as the eye can see. _Skyscrapers_ , they’re called, those rather impressive towers that muggles manage to build without magic. It’s warmer and sunnier, too, and she doesn’t think this is Britain. She can't ask any of the muggles though. Only a loon wouldn't know her own location. Instead she keeps an eye out for a newspaper. There are plenty of people about; people walking, sitting on the grass, or even lying down, but few of them are reading anything. 

It takes her a moment to spot a newspaper. She feels funny going over to read a stranger’s paper, but the elderly woman to whom it belongs doesn’t even glance at her. The paper’s name is _The New York Times_ and now Pansy knows where she is. She’s in bloody America. 

Apparating over such a vast distance in one go was an impressive feat - or it would be, if she’d done it consciously. How is she going to get back to Europe? She’s not deluded enough to believe she can Apparate clear across the ocean. She has seven sickles and three knuts in her pockets. She doesn’t know how much that is in American money, never mind American _Muggle_ money, but she knows it’s nowhere near enough.

Pansy’s on the brink of complete hysteria when a strange calm comes over her. She’d wanted to be far from the war that had consumed Wizarding Britain so completely, and now she is. She has her wand and she's a witch who knows how to look out for herself. This could work out in her favor. 

She remembers the wand she picked up from beside its previous owner’s dead body. She draws it to examine. It's a springy thing with a good feel to it. Yew, ten inches, maybe a Thestral tail hair core. It won’t work as well as her own wand, but it feels like it could work well enough. And it can't be traced back to her.

~

Millicent was awakened in the middle of the night by an unfamiliar owl tapping on her bedroom window. She hesitated to let it in, recalling the Howler Zacharias Smith once sent while drunk blaming her for the detention he’d suffered after being caught out of his dormitory past curfew. She was sorry for whatever Alecto Carrow had done to him, she really was, but it had been rather presumptuous of him to name her his alibi. Just because they’d been friendly and he knew she liked to get a midnight snack from the kitchens was no reason for him to bring her name into it when he was caught.

The owl wasn’t carrying a Howler from any aggrieved old classmate, however. It was carrying an invitation written on the finest parchment in the finest ink. Her presence was requested at a certain place on a certain date at a certain time, but it did not say by whom. Her immediate impulse was to burn the letter and forget about it. Anyone who was foolish enough to actually go deserved whatever happened to them and it wouldn’t be anything good.

Then Millicent realized the significance of the date of this mysterious party. It was Pansy’s birthday. She’d be twenty-five, assuming she was still alive. But if Pansy was alive and well and in England, why hadn’t she contacted her before now? And why wasn’t her name on the invitation? There was no need for such secrecy. Pansy wasn’t wanted by the Ministry. 

“We don’t know where she’s been. She might be in trouble,” Blaise said when Millicent went to see him the following morning. He, too, had received an invitation. 

Millicent could hardly think of anything else the rest of the week. What if it was some cruel joke? Worse, what if it was some trap to snare former Slytherins? There was every reason not to go. And, yet, what if Pansy had sent the invitation? Millicent had to know. 

On the appointed date she and Blaise Apparated half a mile away from the appointed place in Warwickshire. The well-kept old estate they could see in the distance turned out to be their destination although there was no sign of Wizarding life about it. Millicent couldn’t even detect any security enchantments. 

Blaise checked his invitation, and he and Millicent exchanged puzzled looks. This place looked like an ordinary - albeit wealthy - Muggle residence. 

“Surely not,” Blaise murmured, and Millicent knew he, too, was thinking of one of the more preposterous rumors about Pansy, that she had married a muggle. 

The gates opened as if by magic, but Millicent heard the _whir_ of machinery and saw a camera mounted above the gatepost. _Technology_ , it was called, according to Millicent’s old teacher Professor Burbage. She and Pansy had only taken Muggle Studies because it was supposed to be an easy class, and Pansy had often mocked their coursework aloud in the common room for the amusement of their fellow Slytherins.

A liveried manservant - a muggle - opened the front door and ushered them inside. 

“Darlings,” Pansy exclaimed. She rushed to embrace them, first Blaise and then Millicent. 

“Where have you been?” Millicent demanded, squeezing her tightly. 

Pansy didn’t answer. “Some champagne for my guests,” she ordered, and her manservant hastened to obey. 

“Pansy, what’s going on?” Blaise asked. He downed his drink in one long gulp and gestured to the servant for another.

“Something stronger for Mr. Zabini,” Pansy said to the manservant. “Perhaps the Courvoisier.” 

Millicent studied Pansy. She looked perfectly well. Her hands were manicured and her hair looked like it'd been professionally styled. Millicent wasn’t very knowledgeable about Muggle fashion, but she recognized silk when she saw it and she had no doubt Pansy’s evening gown was very expensive. She certainly didn’t look like she’d been chained in a dungeon or on the run for her life. 

Indeed Pansy draped herself in a plush red divan like the mistress of the manor. Millicent couldn’t help but notice that she’d arranged her skirt to display her legs at their best. She was watching Blaise through her eyelashes too. Millicent tried not to care. It wasn't like she had any chance with Blaise herself anyway.

“Are the others coming, do you know?” asked Pansy.

“Daphne was too afraid to,” Blaise answered. “And Theodore and Tracey are on their honeymoon.”

“I don’t know if you know,” Millicent told her, “But Vince died that day at Hogwarts, and Greg’s in Azkaban. He’s got about three years left in his sentence.”

Pansy nodded. “I pick up the _Daily Prophet_ whenever I can. I may live in the Muggle world now, but I still pop into Knockturn Alley from time to time for some shopping.”

“Why?” Millicent asked.

“How?” Blaise wanted to know. 

“Why? Well, at first because I didn’t know if it was safe in the Wizarding world. And now it’s because I don’t fancy being treated like a criminal. I follow what’s going on. Poor Marcus Flint got detained by the Ministry for two weeks just because his landlady mistook his Quidditch robes for Death Eater gear!”

The liveried manservant refilled Pansy’s champagne glass and then posted himself silently beside her divan, waiting until needed again. 

“As to how,” Pansy tossed her head and smirked smugly, “Why, with the help of my new Muggle friends.” 

Blaise arched an eyebrow in disbelief. 

“Oh, it’s true. Muggles can be such loyal friends and so generous. Ledford here gave me this house.”

Millicent gaped at the muggle who’d seemed to be a servant. “He owns this place?”

“ _I_ own it. It was a gift. Ledford likes buying me gifts, don’t you, Ledford?”

“Yes,” said Ledford eagerly. “Anything you’d like, Pansy, anything to make you happy. What may I get you?”

“Nothing more for tonight. Go to bed.”

The muggle man slunk from the room, pausing at the doorway for a last dejected look back at Pansy. 

Millicent suspected the use of a very powerful love potion. “You made him marry you?”

Pansy looked revolted at the thought. “Of course not. Don’t be disgusting.”

“I’m pleased to hear you still have standards,” Blaise drawled. 

Pansy chuckled. “Oh, don’t tell me you disapprove, Blaise. Not _you_ of all people.”

“He’s a muggle, for Merlin’s sake! Seven years among muggles. How could you bear it?”

“Oh, it’s not so bad when you have the very best of everything. But I am rather lonely.” Pansy leaned forward as she spoke, her gaze locked with Blaise’s. “That’s why I invited you here. Tonight was supposed to be my re-introduction to Wizarding society.” 

Millicent felt as though she might as well not even be in the room. 

But Blaise wasn’t having it from Pansy. “Do you have any idea how worried we were?! We thought you’d been murdered or you were being held captive somewhere!”

Millicent found her voice again. “You could’ve sent a message, Pansy. What about your family-”

The look on Pansy’s face was quite cold. “I knew my father was headed to Azkaban or his grave, no matter which side won. If my mother wanted to be dragged down with him, that was her own choice. There was no reason for me to join them.” 

There was silence. 

Then Pansy left her divan and came to snuggle close to Millicent. “Don’t be angry with me, Milly. You’d have done the same.”

No, Millicent wouldn’t have. There were Slytherins and there were Slytherins. Millicent had always known which sort Pansy was. She wiped away angry tears.

“Well, aren’t you going to feed us? You can’t invite people to a party and not feed them.” 

The tension broke. 

Pansy gave a little laugh, no doubt relieved to be forgiven so easily. “Dinner’s already laid out. I put appropriate charms on the dishes to keep things warm or cool.” 

“There will be questions,” Blaise warned. “You must know that, Pansy. People will want to know where you’ve been.” 

All three of them knew that she would be tossed into Azkaban if the Ministry found out what she’d been doing for the past seven years. Using magic to more or less enslave muggles was a very serious offense. 

“Oh, don’t worry about me. I’ll manage. I’ve managed quite well so far, haven’t I?”

Blaise looked Millicent in the eye and then looked away. She knew he’d be going on an unexpected visit to his foreign cousins soon. She was on her own if she let herself be drawn into Pansy’s scheme. But she couldn’t abandon Pansy. She wasn't that kind of Slytherin.


End file.
